That’s the question asked by, of all things, an advertisement on AccuWeather.com’s web site promoting ad-free usage of the site.

Of course, this ad for no advertising is wedged between a huge ad for Verizon’s new high-speed fiber service and a handful of Google ads. It seems AccuWeather is happy to collect advertising dollars while they suggest you might not want to see those ads. I wonder how Verizon and the Google advertisers feel that AccuWeather is insinuating they are annoying?

But it gets better…

When you investigate what it takes to get ads out of your weather-viewing experience, you are promised “Same Great Site Design,”“Same Great Content,” and “No Advertising” for only pennies per day.

Except…

“No Advertising” has a little asterisk next to it. What does that mean, you ask? Well, apparently it’s not exactly zero advertising. Instead, according to the site:

* All ads from external advertisers are removed. AccuWeather reserves the right to promote Premium benefits within the Premium site, or upgrades to your Premium service, or other related AccuWeather services, in empty spaces where existing ads are present on the free AccuWeather.com.

So, you’ll pay pennies a day and still see ads. Just not Verizon and Google’s ads. Only AccuWeather’s. I guess that’s what the user wants, right?

4 Responses to “Accuweather: Ads or no Ads?”

But it doesn’t remember an settings at all, even between “tabs” that they use. So the net effect is that if the feature is used every time you load a page, you’re probably going to notice the adverts more than before since you have to dedicate some spare mental cycles to take action to close it.

I have trouble thinking why anyone would want to pay to get rid of ads. You’re already paying for the access and now to pay to get rid of ads?
How are people suppose to make any money?
It’s not a usability issue, it’s a fundamental issue of “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it” – or in this case, ignore it or go to another website without ads.